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William Browne (poet)
William Browne of Tavistock (?1590 - 1645?) was an English poet Life Overview Browne was born at Tavistock, and educated at Oxford, after which he entered the Inner Temple. His poems, which are mainly descriptive, are rich and flowing, and true to the phenomena of nature, but deficient in interest. Influenced by Spenser, he in turn had an influence upon such poets as Milton and Keats. His chief works were Britannia's Pastorals, 1613, and The Shepheard's Pipe, 1614.John William Cousin, "Browne, William," A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 1910, 51. Web, Dec. 21, 2017. Youth and education Browne was born at Tavistock, Devonshire, of a branch of the family of Browne of Betchworth Castle, Surrey. He received his early education at the grammar school of his native town, and is said to have proceeded to Oxford about 1603. After a short residence at Clifford's Inn he entered the Inner Temple in 1611.Encyclopædia Britannica, 667. In 1624 he returned to Oxford as tutor to Robert Dormer, afterwards earl of Carnarvon, matriculating at Exeter College in April and earning an M.A. degree in November of the same year. Career Nearly all Browne's poetic work dates from his early manhood, before his marriage in 1628 with Timothy, daughter of Sir Thomas Eversham of Horsham, Essex. His elegy on the death of Henry, prince of Wales, and the 1st book of Britannia's Pastorals appeared in 1613; the Shepherd's Pipe, which contained some eclogues by other poets, in 1614. The 2nd book of the pastorals, 1616, is dedicated to William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, whose seat at Wilton was Browne's home for some time. In the 4th eclogue of George Wither's Shepherd's Hunting, written as early as 1613-1614, Philarete (Wither) asks Willy (Browne) why he is silent, and the reply is that some "my music do contemne." The times were unfavorable to his tranquil talent, and the 2nd half of his life was spent in retirement. He died some time before 1645, when letters of administration were granted to his widow, and he may have been the William Browne whose burial is recorded in the Tavistock registers under the date of the 27th of March 1643. Writing Browne was the pupil and friend of Michael Drayton, who associates "my Browne" in the "Epistle to Henry Reynolds" with the 2 Beaumonts as "my dear companions whom I freely chose, My bosom friends." But directly indebted as Browne is for the form of his poems, for the slight story and the rather wearisome allegory, to Spenser, Sidney, Drayton, and especially to Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, his poetry is no mere copy of any of these models. His Arcadia is localized in his native Devonshire. He was untiring in his praises of "Tavy's voiceful stream (to whom I owe more strains than from my pipe can ever flow)." He knew local history and traditions, and he celebrates the gallant sailors who "by their power made the Devonian shore Mock the proud Tagus." (Britannia's Pastorals bk. ii., song 3). It is for his truthful, affectionate pictures of his country life and its surroundings that the stories of Marina and Celandine, Doridon and the rest are still read. A copy of Browne's pastorals with annotations in Milton's handwriting is preserved in the Huth library, and there are many points of likeness between Lycidas and the elegy on Philarete (Thomas Manwood) in the 4th eclogue of the Shepherd's Pipe. Keats was a student of Browne, and Herrick's fairy fantasies are thought to owe something to the 3rd book of the Pastorals. The first 2 books of Britannia's Pastorals were re-issued in 1625. The 3rd, though it had no doubt circulated in the author's lifetime, remained unknown until Beriah Botfield discovered a copy of it in the library of Salisbury cathedral, bound up with the 1613 and 1616 editions of the earlier books. This MS. was edited for the Percy Society by T.C. Croker in 1852. A collected edition of Browne's works was published in 1772 by John Davies. It is not known whether The Inner Temple Masque on the story of Ulysses and Circe, which was written for performance on the 13th of January 1615, was ever actually represented. A series of sonnets to Caelia, some epistles, elegies and epitaphs, with some other miscellaneous poems, complete the list of Browne's works. These have been collected from various sources, the most important being Lansdowne MS. 777 (British Museum), and they were printed for the first time by Sir S.E. Brydges in 1815. Excellent complete editions of Browne are W.C. Hazlitt's (1868-1869) for the Roxburghe library, and a more compact one (1894) by Gordon Goodwin, with an introduction by A.H. Bullen, for the "Muse's Library." For an elaborate analysis of Browne's obligations to earlier pastoral writers see F.W. Moorman, "William Browne" (Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach- und Culturgeschichte der Germanischen Völker Strassburg, 1897). A translation of Marin le Roy de Gomberville's Polexandre, by William Browne (1647), may be a posthumous work of the poet's. Critical introduction by William Thomas Arnold Browne was fortunate in his friends. His life at the Inner Temple brought him into contact not only with his intimate friend Wither and Charles Brooke, but also with such a man as Selden, who wrote commendatory verses to the first book of his Pastorals. He was too, apparently, one of that knot of brilliant young men who called themselves the "sons" of Ben Jonson, and there are some interesting verses, of warm yet not extravagant praise, prefixed by Ben Jonson to the second book of the same poem. With Drayton he appears to have been on cordial and intimate terms. Some verses by Browne are prefixed to the second edition of the Polyolbion, and some of the most charming commendatory verses that were ever written were penned by Drayton in honour of Britannia’s Pastorals. Chapman, too, "the learned Shepherd of fair Hitching Hill," was, as more than one indication sufficiently proves, intimate with our poet, and Browne was not only familiar with his friend’s Iliad and Odyssey, but also, we may be very sure, knew well that golden book of poetry, the Hero and Leander. With such contemporary influences, and with the fullest knowledge of and reverence for such of his predecessors as Sidney and Spenser, Browne had every advantage given to his genius, and every help to enable him to float in the full and central stream of poetic tradition. Browne was apparently a diligent student of our early poetry. In his Shepherd’s Pipe he gives in full a long story from Occleve, a poet about whom probably, at the time he wrote, no one but himself knew anything whatever. He also, though he nowhere refers to him by name, had undoubtedly studied Chaucer to some purpose. The following passage — ‘As when some malefactor judged to die For his offence, his execution nigh, Casteth his sight on states unlike to his And weighs his ill by other’s happiness,’ reveals its origin at once to anyone familiar with the "Knightes Tale". The description of the Cave of Famine, again, is transparently studied from Chaucer’s description of the temple of Mars; though Browne’s poverty in what the critics of the last century called "invention" makes him compare ill with his prototype in passages of this kind. Still more familiar to Browne than the Canterbury Tales were Shakspeare’s plays and poems. Reminiscences of Shakspeare might easily be pointed out in his heroic verse, and a still closer study is apparent in certain of the songs scattered about his Britannia’s Pastorals. The 2 poets, however, to whom Browne owed most, and whose praises he has most gratefully recorded are Spenser and Sidney. The influence of the former’s Aeglogues as well as of the Faerie Queene upon Browne’s style and manner is very perceptible. For Sidney he had that enthusiastic and affectionate reverence which was commonly felt by all the poets of that time for the poet and the author of the Defence of Poesie. The passages on Spenser and Sidney are, besides their literary interest, of poetic value in themselves.... Between Browne and Wither there existed a very intimate friendship, and in Wither’s youth their work ran to a certain extent upon the same lines. The hand of the author of the Shepherd’s Hunting can apparently be traced in several passages of the Shepherd’s Pipe, and in his own poems Wither speaks in the most affectionate and respectful terms of the "singer of the Western main." Of Browne’s possible relation to Milton it is unnecessary to speak at length. Milton certainly had read Browne’s poems and read them carefully, and it is interesting to compare the Inner Temple Masque with Comus and the elegies contained in the Pastorals and the Shepherd’s Pipe with Lycidas. The little song entitled the "Charme" in the former poem bears a strong likeness, as Warton has pointed out, to a well-known passage in Comus, and the general design of the 2 poems is similar enough to excite attention. But while it is right to think of Milton as a friendly reader of our poet, it would be a mistake to ascribe to Browne any great share in his poetic development. What is certain is that both poets felt and showed in their different ways the combined and contending influences of classical and Puritan feeling. Browne is at once a pagan and a Protestant. There is another English poet of a later day with whom Browne may fairly be brought into some sort of comparison. That poet is Keats.Keats prefixes a quotation from Britannia’s Pastorals to his own Epistles. It is unnecessary to say that Browne is a poet of a quite different and lower rank; but he is like Keats in being before all things an artist, he has the same intense pleasure in a fine line or a fine phrase for its own sake, and he further resembles Keats in possessing very little pure constructive or narrative power. One thinks of Keats passing a fine phrase over his mental palate with an almost sensual pleasure; "I look upon fine phrases like a lover," he himself says in one passage; and in a lesser degree one can fancy much the same of Browne. There is one passage, the value of which depends almost wholly on the masterly use of proper names. Their beauty of sound and delicate appropriateness to the place they occupy in the line — alliteration and such like expedients being freely employed — help out the historical and literary associations which make such names as Coos or Cilicia in themselves poetical. So in what may be called a color passage," a rare control of the resources of our tongue and a rare feeling for and discrimination in shades of color go to make up a description of real beauty and power. Browne is something of a literary epicure, and however feeble or disconnected may be his narrative of events, he rarely gives us a line which has not been tried and allowed by a taste far more delicate than common. It is consistent with this that he should be a warm defender of poetry. : ‘’Tis not the rancour of a cankered heart :That can debase the excellence of art,’ he says in one passage; and how easily one might fancy Keats, transplanted to the age of James I, the author of these most characteristic lines:— : ‘In lieu of hounds that make the wooded hills :Talk in a thousand voices to the rills, :I like the pleasing cadence of a line, :Struck by the consort of the sacred Nine.’ Browne’s natural tendency is to be copious and glowing in description, and his warm fancy is always tending to run away with him. He wants to be luscious and sweet. So he appeals to the ‘blessed Muses’:— ‘Dwell on my lines, and, till the last sand fall, Run hand in hand with my weak pastoral; Cause every coupling cadence flow in blisses, And fill the world with envy of such kisses. Make all the rarest beauties of our clime, That deign a sweet look on my younger rhyme, To linger on each line’s enticing graces As on their lover’s lips and chaste embraces.’ But with all this he feels strongly the force of the flowing Puritan tide, and spoils his poetry here and there, as Keats never does, by his resolution to improve the occasion. Browne is a staunch Protestant, and uses plain language about nuns and nunneries, Spain and Rome. All this does his poetry no good. We can imagine him passionate and powerful enough if he had lived a generation earlier. As it is, one has the feeling in reading him that he is living between 2 worlds of poetry without vital hold on either. His is neither the ardent muse of the young Shakspeare, nor the pure august muse of the great Puritan poet who was to follow him. The rare qualities of Browne’s work cannot blind us to the fact that he is almost destitute of constructive or narrative power. As a narrative poem Britannia’s Pastorals is deplorable. The reader is perpetually passing from the woes of one fair one to those of another, and has great difficulty in making it clear to himself at any given time whether he is reading about Marina or Idya or Celia. The 3rd book ends without any particular conclusion, and there is no reason why Browne should not have gone on in the same strain for half a dozen books more. On the other hand, as pastoral poetry, the work is not without peculiar excellences. It is true that the attempts to keep up the pastoral illusion are sometimes of a desperate character,— as for instance when the poet addresses his readers as "swaines,"— but Browne’s very accurate knowledge of his native county, and his loving enthusiasm for it, give his work a special value, and stamp much of it with the character of a direct personal impression. The allusions to Devonshire are innumerable. Browne had a peculiar love for his native streams, and the waters of his own Tavy are ever murmuring musically through his song. Just as Wordsworth said that he had made thousands of verses as he strolled by his beloved Rotha, so Browne speaks of : ‘Tavy’s voiceful stream, to whom I owe :More strains than from my pipe can ever flow.’ The little tributary Walla has inspired some of his most charming lines. He abounds in old local words like Berry and trend, and he calls the Tavy trout : ‘The shoats with whom is Tavy frought.’ He is enthusiastic about the Devonshire heroes. His knowledge of the country is inbred, and he reveals himself as passing, like Wordsworth, a ‘dedicated’ youth:— : ‘Nor could I wish those golden hours unspent : Wherein my fancy led me to the woods, :And tuned soft lays of rural merriment, : Of shepherd’s love, and never-resting floods.’ We owe to this knowledge and love of the country those pictures of the shepherd wending his early way to his day’s work, of the shepherd boy sitting alone on the fell top and piping as he watches his sheep,—a charming mixture, the whole passage, of literal fact and classical reminiscence;—of the country maid straying through the fields to make her nosegay, of the boys searching the woods for bird’s eggs or hunting the squirrel from tree to tree. It is in such pictures that the reader of Britannia’s Pastorals finds his chief pleasure. Browne cannot be said to have victoriously overcome the inherent difficulties of pastoral poetry, but his genuine delight in country sights and sounds makes him less unreal than any other English poet—if we except perhaps Ramsay,—who has tried this form of composition. He, again like Wordsworth, must be read in selections, if he is to be read with unmixed enjoyment; but in his best passages — and they are not few — he will send to the listener wafts of pure and delightful music.from William Thomas Arnold, "Critical Introduction: William Browne (c.1590–c.1645)," The English Poets: Selections with critical introductions (edited by Thomas Humphry Ward). New York & London: Macmillan, 1880-1918. Web, Apr. 10, 2016. Recognition 7 of his poems ("A Welcome", "The Sirens' Song", "The Rose", "Song", "Memory", "In Obitum M.S. Xo Maij, 1614", and "On the Countess Dowager of Pembroke") were included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900."Alphabetical list of authors: Brontë, Emily to Cutts, Lord, Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900 (edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch). Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1919. Bartleby.com, Web, May 16, 2012. Publications Poetry *''Two Elegies''. London: Thomas Snodham for Richard Moore, 1613. *''Britannia's Pastorals''. London: George Norton, 1613; London: Nicholas Okes & Thomas Snodham for Geo: Norton, 1616. *''Britannia's Pastorals: The second booke''. London: Thomas Snodham for George Norton, 1616. *''Original Poems: Never before published. Kent, UK: Johnson & Warwick at the Private Press of Lee Priory, 1815-1817. *''Britannia's Pastorals: A third book (edited by Thomas Crofton Croker). London: T. Richards for the Percy Society, 1852. *''The Poems of William Brown of Tavistock'' (edited by Gordon Goodwin; with introduction by A.H. Bullen). (2 volumes), London: Routledge / New York: Dutton, 1893; London: Lawrence & Bullen / New York: Scribner, 1894. Volume I, Volume II Play *''Circe and Ulysses, The Inner Temple Masque; presented by the Gentlemen there January 13, 1614''. London: Golden Cockerel Press, 1954. Translated *Martin Le Roy, The History of Polexander: In five bookes. London: Tho. Harper for Thomas Walkley, 1647. Collected editions *''The Works of William Browne''. (3 volumes), London: T. Davies, 1772. *''The Whole Works of William Browne'' (edited by William Carew Hazlitt). (2 volumes), London: Whittingham & Wilkins for the Roxburghe Library, 1868-1869. Volume I, Volume II Anthologized *''The Shepheards Pipe''. London: Nicholas Okes for George Norton, 1614. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:William Browne, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Feb. 3, 2016. See also * List of British poets References * Wikisource, Web, Dec. 21, 2017. Notes External links ;Poems * Selected Poetry of William Browne (1 poem) at Representative Poetry Online. *Browne in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900: "A Welcome", "The Sirens' Song", "The Rose", "Song (For her gait if she be walking)", "Memory", "In Obitum M.S. Xo Maij, 1614", "On the Countess Dowager of Pembroke" * William Browne at PoemHunter (7 poems) *Browne in The English Poets: An anthology: [http://www.bartleby.com/337/332.html Song: ‘Welcome, welcome do I sing’ (from Minor Poems)], [http://www.bartleby.com/337/333.html "The Charm" (from The Inner Temple Masque)], Sonnet: ‘Fairest, when by the rules of palmistry’, **from Britannia's Pastorals: "Marina and the River-God," "The Scented Grove," "The Music Lesson," "The Hunted Squirrel," "A Metamorphosis," "The Poet's Ambition," "The Praise of Spenser," "A Lament for His Friend," "The Praise of Sidney," "A Colour Passage," "The Description of Walla," "The Song of Tavy," The Complaint of Pan," The Song of Celadyne," "A Comparison" *William Browne of Tavistock info & 25 poems at English Poetry, 1579-1830 *William Browne at Poetry Nook (247 poems) ;Books * Britannia's Pastorals Project Gutenberg * Original poems by William Browne published with biographical comments and Browne's family tree by Samuel Egerton Brydges at the Lee Priory Press in 1815. ;About *William Browne in the Encyclopædia Britannica *"William Browne, of Tavistock" in The Spectator *"Brown, William (1591-1643?)" in the Dictionary of National Biography * Original article is at " Browne, William" Category:1590s births Category:1640s deaths Category:People from Tavistock, Devon Category:English poets Category:Alumni of Exeter College, Oxford Category:Members of the Inner Temple Category:17th-century poets Category:Poets Category:English-language poets